Quote

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

Max Eastman

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Max Eastman
Age: 86 †
Born: 1883
Born: January 4
Died: 1969
Died: March 25
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Opinion Journalist
Peace Activist
Poet
Suffragist
Writer
Canandaigua
New York
Max Forrester Eastman
Pain
Playfully
Instinct
Laughter
Taking
Humor
Challenges

More quotes by Max Eastman

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A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.
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Humor is a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect.There is always a laugh in the utterly familiar.
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Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.
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Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
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Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind
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The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.
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It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.
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Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
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Patriotism is one of the unalterable facts of man's nature. It is a virtue if you like it, and a vice if you don't like it.
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There is truth in the high opinion that in so far as a man conforms, he ceases to exist.
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A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.
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A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke
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